


Formative Moments

by KitsJay



Category: A-Team (2010)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, Pre-Movie, a-team kinkmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitsJay/pseuds/KitsJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of each of the four members of the A-Team as children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Murdock

When H.M. Murdock was eight years old, he read _The Scarlet Letter_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne and hated it. Hester Prynne, he decided, could never be as pretty as his own mother, who had long black hair that she never brushed, but let grow wild in a mess of rat’s nests that reminded him of the long tangling vines of a dewberry bush. She had the same sea-green eyes as him, shiny with a sick heat, and if he looked close enough into them, he could just see the crash of waves on a rocky beach somewhere far inside. When he naively told her such, the corners of her pale lips had quirked at the side, that secretive half-smile she saved just for him, and she had cuddled him close and told him that he was the sweetest boy she had ever known.

He used to ask her what his name meant, and each time, she would tell him something different. Haddock Mackenzie. Hubert Moss. Hassim Marfat. He giggled and asked her what her name meant, and she would hold his hand and read her name in the lines of his palm, tickling fingers gliding over baby-soft palms.

She used to hold him close and read him books about wars and heroes and pirates, but he liked the stories she made up best. Those were filled with chanting beats in the background that he could just make out in the cadence of her voice, like a rolling drum, and gods that created the world by stealing a pebble of light and throwing it into the sky.

Hester Prynne wore a scarlet A pinned on her chest; Eulalia Murdock wore flowers woven into her dark hair.

They lived in a trailer near the woods and she used to play with him barefoot in the dirt and taught him how to steal nectar from honeysuckle and pointed out the broken branches and half-dug tunnels between the trees.

A gulon, she said with her small corner smile.

She pointed out the delicate cloven hoof tracks that disappeared into a patch of fallen pine needles.

The Deer Woman, she nodded sagely.

He once found a circle of mushrooms and she had tucked a lock of hair behind his ear—too long, it wanted cutting—and her eyes lit up like a crash of thunder overhead. She was magic, because it started raining just as he thought that. She patted the wet dirt, uncaring of the streaks of mud on her skirt, and told him all about fairy rings and they had a picnic right there, with little acorn cups full of cool rainwater dripping off the leaves and a can of cold beans for dinner. She said it was a feast and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the moth-eaten blanket was really an elegant silk tablecloth; the hard brown cups were actually goblets with jewels encrusted into the metal; the beans were caviar on his tongue.

He excitedly told her about what he saw and she had a look in her eye that he had never seen before. It was the tide coming in, he thought, drowning the beachside rocks and pulling the shells out to the deep.

Oh, H.M., she said sadly, but didn’t explain. It would be years before he learned that crazy ran in families.

When she was taken away, screaming, H.M. reached out for her and was held back by the strong, sinewy arms of his grandfather. His grandmother hid her tears in a handkerchief and H.M. told her that she wasn’t supposed to do that, she was supposed to catch them and drink them before going to bed to see who she was going to marry in a dream. Maybe it didn’t work for people who were already married. Momma never said.

His grandmother had looked at him sadly and led him to the car, an old Chevrolet with dents on the outside and rust spreading like a disease over the trunk.

That was another reason he didn’t like Hawthorne. All the other women had hated Hester, called her terrible names, and threw her out of her home.

They never took her child away from her, though.


	2. B.A.

“Another fight?” B.A.’s mother was stunning, and if anyone looked close, they could tell the knock-out she had been ten years ago. She was small, barely reaching the shoulder of the men who came by the store, but seemed to be a giant to those who had faced her fierce temper. Her hands were calloused by years wrapped around a broom handle or hauling out trash; she tended the store most days and worked cleaning the others. Those hands could smack her children on their behinds whenever they were in trouble and turn around, quick as a raven, to soothe away the hurt and softly draw away the tears away from the corners of little eyes.

“Sorry, Mama,” B.A. said, scuffing his shoe into the faded brown linoleum. One of his brothers ran past, screaming something about “getting someone” to squeals of happy shrieks from his little sisters. His mama didn’t even flinch. A happy household was a loud household, full of yelling and laughter, and no one could ever say that their household wasn’t happy. Even when Mama was tired or angry from work, wielding a wooden spoon like a sword in one hand, they were happy.

Of course, B.A. wasn’t feeling very happy at the moment, looking at his mama's disappointed expression.

“What is the matter with you, boy?” Janine Baracus asked with her cool brown stare. “I told you not to mess around with them boys.”

“I know, Mama, but—“ He hesitated, but continued gamely on. “They said that Daddy run off!”

There was a tense silence, even his sisters and brother pausing in their game to hear what was said. One subject that was never brought up was Daddy, a man B.A. barely remembered, and who the younger ones probably didn’t remember at all. Occasionally at night in the room they all shared, they would whisper at B.A. to tell them about him. The memories were faded and changed--sometimes he was a tall man, sometimes he was a little shorter than average; sometimes he was big and bulky, sometimes he was a thin man. One thing that he always remembered was that daddy had a quick smile and a wandering eye. That never made it into the stories he told his brothers and sisters.

Mama tensed, then blew out a long sigh which ruffled the hair falling in front of her face.

She gave B.A. a sad smile and patted her knee. He was too old to sit in his mama’s lap, even though sometimes he wished he could, but he knelt by her and laid his head on her leg, letting her long fingers card through his hair thoughtfully.

“Oh, baby,” she said finally. “Your daddy did run off, but that ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of. Your momma been working hard all her life to raise y’all right and we don’t need that good-for-nothin’ around to tell us what we should be doing.”

“Mama?” B.A. asked when she paused.

“Point is, honey, that he ain’t around and we all gotta live with that.”

She pulled him up, cradling his face in her hands, smoothing down his cheeks with her thumbs. “I love you all so much and I want y’all to remember that. Next time someone asks you where your daddy is, you tell ‘em that it don’t matter, ‘cause your momma loves you all twice as much. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” B.A. said with a hopeful look. She laughed lightly and pulled him into a hug before pushing him back with a hard look in her eyes and a wagging finger in front of his face.

“You get into one more fight, though, young man…”


	3. Face

Templeton Arthur Peck remembers his mother as having golden curls, bright blue eyes, and a Hollywood smile. Every kid thinks that his mother is the most beautiful girl in the world, but he thinks it might have been true in his case. He imagines her sometimes, when he’s feeling lonely, as an actress, a beautiful woman who laughed lightly with a martini in her hand and a coy look at her suitors, dancing into the early morning hours. When he’s older, he’ll think that he wasn’t far off, that maybe she was a pretty girl from some Midwestern state who came out to L.A. thinking she’d be a star before finding out the hard way that pretty girls are a dime a dozen, even before she got knocked up with a kid she didn't want. He’s not sure if it makes him feel better or worse.

The nuns don’t talk about her, not that they know anything beyond the son she left on the front steps of the orphanage who looked up at them with big solemn eyes, thumb stuck in his mouth, a smear of red juice at the corners of his lips. They had taken him in, changed his worn-out, a size too big thrift shop clothes with some clean ones, plied him with cookies and asked if he knew where his parents were. There was no note. He didn’t even have her handwriting to look back on later, to see if she wrote the same curling k’s that he did or the shortened j’s with the long tail. In movies, the mother always leaves a special blanket or a pendant or something so that later, she'll recognize it and mother and son will have a happy reunion. She leaves him with nothing, not even a name.

The other kids ask him questions and he learns quickly how to make up stories, how sneaking chocolate and selling it to the other kids makes him popular, and how to sweetly smile at the nuns so they’ll forgive him a multitude of sins.

Tommy ends up being one of his best friends, a slightly slow, but good-natured kid with a gap tooth like out of an advertisement and shaggy brown hair that sticks up in the back no matter how many times the nuns try to smooth it down. They spend every waking moment together and Templeton doesn’t even have to make up stories about how his mother is a spy and she’ll be back one day after she gets back from her super-secret mission and they’ll go to Europe together while she tells him about all the hearts she broke while she was away. Tommy likes him just the way he is.

A family comes by, bland and generic and oh-so-perfect, and the next thing he knows, Tommy is leaving. He promises Templeton he’ll keep in touch and they pinky-swear on it. It’s the second promise made to Templeton that is broken.

He learns how to smile and sweet-talk and be the friend everyone wants, but he never learns how to keep people from always leaving him behind.


	4. Hannibal

John Smith did his best to never stand out. It wasn’t hard, with a name like his, to blend into the crowd. He did well in school, was decent at sports, but he never won any awards or tried out for any of the teams. He was mostly quiet, sitting in the back taking notes, never causing any trouble. The teachers weren’t too concerned: there were far too many children who were failing or constantly talked in class to worry about the boy who did his work quietly and never complained about anything.

His mother was a sweet woman, if a little meek, with hair perfectly pinned back into a bun and dinner on the table by 6:00 every night. His father was the opposite, a big man who worked at the factory on the graveyard shift and had a booming voice and bad temper. Neither John nor his mother saw him very often, just in those few moments before he left for work or when he arrived in the morning as John was leaving for school.

It was never a good idea to stand out.

Sometimes it would be fine. His dad would laugh and kiss his mom on the cheek and ask John if he wanted to go outside to toss a football around as the daylight was fading.

And then there were the other times. The times when his mom would meet him at the bus stop and tell him not to come home, to go run and hide, sneak in later. The times when he would hear the tell-tale shouts from the other room and edge around the den until he could make it out the door and wander around until the old man went to work or forgot about what it was he was angry about.

The times when John would say something, a wise-ass comment that would normally be laughed off, and his dad would lunge at him, striking as fast as a desert snake, pinning him against the wall with an arm against his windpipe.

“What did you say?” he would spit out and John would try to choke out an answer while his vision danced out of sight. The arm would let go and he would gasp in a breath, only to find that massive fist bunching together the collar of his shirt, tossing him across the room.

He would stand back up, looking the old man in the eye, because cowering just made him angrier.

John learned that the hard way.

“I said, I’ve already done it, sir,” he would reply evenly, meeting the man’s gaze.

His mom would watch uselessly from the kitchen, twisting a washcloth between her fingers. If she was feeling brave, she would bring a beer, offering it to the man silently and kept supplying him with drinks until he was loose again, laughing and sociable like he always was when he was drunk.

“Should have left you on the side of the road a long time ago,” his dad said with disgust. It was half regret, half promise. He sank into his armchair, dismissing them both.

The worst part wasn’t the frequency or the violence, but the knife’s edge of uncertainty. The knowledge that every word, every action, no matter how innocuous, could lead to an outburst. Even during the good times, when his dad was friendly, his mother and he didn’t dare to breathe the wrong way, worried that it would set him off.

His mom said he was a good man and John could imagine it. He never lied about his hours at the plant, he was a hard worker, and he would never steal. John learned that it was entirely possible to be a good man to everyone except the ones who counted the most. He would forget that lesson years down the road, with someone who he thought was a good man.

He ended senior year with a concussion, a cracked rib, and the memory of hands closing around his throat. His father slapped a big hand on his shoulder and smiled at the other parents, sharing in their pride. His mother had hugged him and cried into his neck. She let go of him, straightened his cap and gown.

“Oh, John,” she said, blue eyes soft and still damp.

“I'll stay,” he had offered.

His mom twisted her mouth into a moue of regret, glancing back where his dad was laughing loudly with the principal. When she turned back to him, her face was determined. “You’ll do no such thing. You’re going to go to college and make a life for yourself, you understand me?”

It would have been convincing if her voice hadn’t wavered, but he was young and stupid and full of anger, so he had taken off as soon as he could, eager to leave it all behind him.

The recruiter he went to see senior year asked if he could handle the tension of a war, the violence; he didn’t even have to think before saying yes.


End file.
